This Week in Review

What a week. It seems like there was something everyday, but I'll only tell about the interesting parts! :-)

Saturday came with a horrendous rain storm. Gorgeous light storm though. After walking the length of two, yes I said two malls, and doing more shoping then I ever cared to do, we decided it would be a good time to just relax and watch a good movie. Momma T, Cam and I curl up in her bed and get comfy and ready for the movie. We are all comfy and in to the movie when we hear this little drip, drip, drip sound. So not a good sound to hear as its pouring down rain. Momma and quickly look up, and there coming from her ceiling straight onto the bed, is the source of noise. Fantastic! We stick bowls under it to catch the water as we call to the dh to come quick! He rushes in, sees the problem and promptly heads to the attic. He finds the source and decides he needs to go out on the roof to fix it. GREAT! Nothing like a mixture of rain, lightening, roof and the dh! He tells me to head to the attic as he heads to the roof to see if we can figure out where the rain is getting in. Of course, I make Momma stand on the ladder to at least be in the attic with me!!! Up on the roof, the dh starts pouring even more water on the roof so I can tell where it really starts leaking. Finally, source is located and the dh promptly goes to work fixing the problem. Meanwhile, I see this flashbulb moment go off in Momma's head when she realizes, um, that water that the dh was pouring into the attic was probably leaking through the ceiling onto the bed. OOOPPPS! She goes down to take care of that as I sit there in the attic all by my little self. As I am watching the roof above me start looking like its going to cave in with the dh walking around up there, I start to freak. So he finally finishes fixing the problem and comes to the attic to see what I was trying to explain to him about the "caving" in comments. Finally, problems all fixed. Thank GOD! Meanwhile, Momma comes back up the ladder to check out the progress and brings Sebastian up with her to take a look. Well, Sebastian had other ideas and lept from her arms and had a hayday running around the attic. Great. Note to self, never bring the cat to the attic!!! Thank goodness THATS over with!!!

Work was crazy this week. You would have thought it wasn't a holiday coming up with the way my bosses were working! We were short staffed so there was extra work to be done. After a few come aparts, I finally made it through the days and made it the days off! WHEW! Of course on my way home, I had to make that fateful stop at Randalls to get my ingredients for what I was bringing to the family dinner the next day. This consisted of the ever famous green bean caserole and sweet potatoe caserole. Evidently I am an expert at the sweet potatoes. Mom requests it every year.

I got home that night and set up in the kitchen to make my dishes and luckily I had the best little helper ever. Cameron came and just whipped up those sweet potatoes. He did a fantastic job. Meanwhile, Momma set up the green bean caserole since I had only made it one time before and lets just say, it wasn't my best work! More like green been soup! OOPS. Oh well. Momma was in charge so no worries. Everything gets prepared and all we have to do Thanksgiving morning is put it all in the oven for just a bit and we are good to go.

Thanksgiving morning comes and the dh puts the food in the oven and we start to get ready to go. All of a sudden, the dh remembers that the food is actually in the oven and we had taken it straight from the fridge to the oven so the outside of the dishhes was like WAY hot whereas the centers were ice cold. Its okay, its fixable. Stir it all up and try again. No problem. Crises averted. I throw some more marshmellows on the top of the taters and back in the oven it goes. Well, the dh had this grand idea of putting both dishes in the broiler for a few mins to toast the marshmellows and the french fried onions. Look how pretty the dishes turned out:

Dont they just look wonderful???? Okay, good idea in theory only. Note to self, dont put them in the broiler!!! There were flames and everything! The fire dept was darn near involved! Nothing like "blackened" green bean caserole and sweet potatoe caserole!!! Needless to say, we were late for lunch! All in all though, after the "blackened" parts were scrapped off, it wasn't so bad. Nobody seemed to complain. Of course they were prolly all silently laughing hysterically!!!

So after lunch, we sat down on the floor and played Swipe with the kiddos. We had a ball. I'm not sure who had more fun, us, or the kids!

Aren't they cute??? The dh, my niece, Amanda, and nephew Jack all laying on the floor playing the dice game Swipe. What a blast. Of course my niece decided that she was going to steal my husband. She promptly marched right over to me and informed me that SHE was his girlfriend!!! Now, I always figured he would get a girlfriend, but I was kinda hoping for someone a little older than 3!!! hehehe It was the cutest thing ever!

Finally it was time to go home. Cameron decided to drive us:

Pretty darn good driver for a six year old!!! Isn't he adorable???? The rest of the evening was simply spent relaxing and recovering from a HUGE meal. Boy was I stuffed.

We went to bed early as we knew we had to pick up a friend of mine at the airport the following morning at 8:45am!! For pete's sake! I dont have to work that day but I still had to be up!!! Oh well, it was well worth it. I haven't seen her in over a year and just love the fact that she is visiting. Originally is from Germany and is now living in Bermuda and working as a dive instructor. One of these days I'm going to make it out there to Bermuda to learn to dive. That would just be awesome! We pick her up from the airport and its home for her to rest a bit and then off to a late lunch for sushi. Yuck. Good thing THEY like it! Of course, our plan now for tomorrow is to decorate for Christmas!! yeah!!! my favorite time of yeart! I love all the decorations. I just think its all wonderful. So, Gee, do you think she's getting in the holiday spirit???



Isn't she adorable?!?!?! I will keep you posted on what transpires becasue I'm sure with her here there will be lots of adventures! In the meantime, I'm going to bed to prepare myself for tomorrow!!!

Hectic Days and Sleepless Nights

I just looked at the calender and realized that Thanksgiving is NEXT week! How did that happen? It just snuck up on me. The passed few weeks have just been absolutely CRAZY and have flown by.

I'm finally getting back to somewhat normal after surgery. Still finding foods I can't eat, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the side effects suck. But every day gets better, the pain less and less, and the incisions are healing and fading out. So, all and all, its good. Surgery on the other hand, is NOT so good. No matter how you have it done, it sucks. This has been a bad year for surgeries. Me, Andie, Cas, all right in a row, and now Cam had his tonsils out today (he's doing GREAT by the way) and then I found out yesterday that my dad will be having surgery before the end of the year also. GEEZ. Thats enough already! This year just has to be over. Between surgeries and deaths this year, I've had about enough of 2007!

We also had a little scare this week. My kitty, Sebastian, got out and decided to take a tour of the neighborhood. He was missing all night and all day. I just had this horrible feeling we'd never see him again. I hate that! Luckily, he had gotten over to the street behind us and ran in one of the neighbor's garages, who happens to be a cat person thankfully, and was scared to death. He had gotten lost I think. So, I went and retrieved him and brought him home. We were all constantly petting the poor little guy. No more outside priviledges for him. From now on, he will be strickly an indoor kitty. I did not sleep at all the night he was gone and then the night he came home, I actually thought I had slept pretty good, but my dh informed me that everytime he woke up, I was petting Sebastian. He told me that once I was even sitting straight up and petting him. Hmmm......think I missed him?!?!! I've never done that before. The most I do when I sleep is snore, so that was new one on me!!!

Surgery

No matter how you slice it, surgery sucks. I went into this whole experience with the idea that all was going to be 100% better as soon as the surgery was over. That is what I had been told also. Well, I'm not real sure why I actually believed that. Surgery is after all, surgery. They cut you open and it hurts. I'm sorry that I am not super woman and up running marathons on this third day after surgery. Nor am I milking it trying to get attention or trying to get sympathy. I'm simply trying to recover from my very first surgery ever as best as I can. This is all new to me so I had no idea what to expect.

So, let me start at the beginning. They wheel you off to the OR and tell you that they are going to give you a cocktail that makes it seems like you've had a few margaritas. Cool by me! I asked if they could throw in some amaratto with margarita, but evidently not. They throw that into my IV and wheel me into the OR. About all I had time to say was, Oh, so this is an OR? and i was out. In the meantime, the surgeron cuts three holes. One is a one inch deep incision into my belly button, one to the right of my belly button and one above it. Into one slit goes a camera so the surgeon can see where he's going and the other hole is filled with cutting equipment. They also filled my stomach cavity with gas to expand it so they could see what they were doing and where they were going. Gotta make sure they get the right organ you know? They go up and cut the gallbladder away from the liver and the other organs its is attached to and then pull it out along with the golf ball sized stone, out through my belly button. Hence the reason that incision is larger. Has to make room for the entire organ and the stone. Then they have to go back up and re-route the bile ducts to go a different direction then what it was originally set up for. Now, I was also told that this whole transaction was going to take about 20 to 30 mins. Well, it actually took about an hour and a half. The next thing I remembered was waking up in the recovery room. And not by my choice either. They were adamant that I wake up and I was not ready!!

Back to my room I go to finish waking up. The nurses were fantastic. Of course, I have to pass certain criteria before they will release me from the hospital. Those are, i have to get up and walk up and down the hall and I have to twinkle, twice. Now, this sounds all easy and stuff, but eh, not so much! however, the good part is, you are still on pretty good drugs so its not as bad as it could be. My biggest goal was to get out of there before 5p cause I didn't want to sit in Houston traffic. Pretty sad that that was the only thing I was concerned about huh?? So I pushed the gammet a bit and the nurse actually let me slide a bit and I finally got out there.

Now, the ride home.........OMG! That was horrible. All the starting and stopping and bumps on the roads and what not! I so thought I was going to die. The pain was awhful! I couldnt lay on my back because it was killing me and I for sure couldnt lay on my stomach and my sides were out of the question as well, so now what??? The other thing I wasnt quite so prepared for was the gas pain. They had told me that they were filling my stomach full of gas and that I would probably feel the pain in my shoulder. Which I thought was weird, but i figured okay they knew what they were talking about. Well, that pain stretched across my entire back. We finally make it home and I crawl in bed just bawling like a big ole baby. That was not happiness. My dh got me settled and gave me drugs and I tried to get some sleep. I cant tell you how many drugs I took that night, but not a single thing touched the pain. Then of course, once I finally did get to sleep, I was awake and having to move every two hours. They had also given me at least 2,000 cc's of fluid so of course, it was all making its way back out. Poor dh. I couldnt make it by myself so he got to get up every two hours also to help me. The more I moved the more it hurt. I know I needed to move around but dang, it sure did hurt.

Every day it gets a little easier. But I can honestly tell you, this is not what I expected. I dont understand how some people have been up running marathons and stuff the next day after this kind of surgery. Evidently some people seem to think its a very minor surgery and no big deal. Well, I hope they have to go through it and see the full extent of it. They really do cut your stomach muscles and it really does hurt. Again, I'm sorry I'm not super woman and can just jump up and run. And I'm sorry that my dh was nice enough to take off the week to help me when I needed help. But, this is how I have to deal with it, and it hurts, and if its not good enough, then I'm sorry. I dont need your help nor your sympathy anyway.